Science Fiction & Fantasy Books That Make You Dumb

The Books That Make You Dumb website correlates the most-read books by college students with the average SAT/ACT scores listed for that college. The result is a pretty chart that shows books (color coded by genre) on a “dumb/smart” scale.

I’ve taken the science fiction & Fantasy results from the sorted graph and show them here. Perpetuating the unscientific method that the website uses, the resulting list of science fiction books, from “Dumb” to “Not-so-Dumb”, are:

You missed the book Fahrenheit 451, the mere reading of which (according to this analysis) makes one dumber than not reading at all. Total silliness but I bet the analysis will stir up a ton of debate in the coming days.

After going to their site, I notice a lot of the “dumber” books are the sort that would be assigned for reading in an average English class. What its likely showing is that people that only read what they’re assigned do worse than those that do outside reading.

There’s actually a few more SF&F books that aren’t in the Science Fiction/Fantasy color as they’re under other genres such as Farenheit 451 and Animal Farm under “Dystopian”, A Wrinkle in Time and The Giver under “Children’s Lit”, etc. but overall it’s an LOL.

Come on, this is less of a case of books that make you dumb, then the kind of books that people at various levels of perceived intelligence read. The Chronicles of Narnia are not perceived as intellectually challenging, so they attract people with lower skills. The same thing goes with the disparity between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings

On the other hand, Atlas shrugged was near the top, which probably follows it’s general publicity that it is a major egghead work, attracting people who think they are smart enough to read it (although if you are actually smart enough to read it, then you are most likely smart enough to avoid it.)

Did anyone, anyone happen to notice that the books listed are supposed to be the readers “Favorite” books? Not their only source reading. One of my favorite books is “I know why the caged bird sings”. Why? Because of where I come from. Do I dare to believe that anyone who doesn’t read it is more or less intelligent then someone who has read the complete works of W. Shakespeare? No. (I own, and have read the complete works).It is one of my favorites because it strikes a chord with me. That’s it.